Hover-crate or Beer-Kart

 So i'm an Engineer, who is married with three children . A Boy to date of writing 5 years of age and a pair of twins of 2.5 years old a girl and a boy. To be completely honest next to my work these four have the ability to claim all my spare time and/or deprive me of my sleep. Time i used to fill with motorcycles. If you want you can read up on that in my first ever blog: "CAFERACING AND RESTOMODDING A RD350B". 
One thing to note, is that i write my blog's about these projects with the power of hindsight. Meaning that the project is at least 75% finished and has been in use for (in this case) at least a year.

What am i hinting at, with this title:"Hover-crate or Beer-Kart". And how did it came about? Somehow my mind tricks me into these things. In this case a idea i had about modifying a BobbyCar, evolved into a hybrid of combining a hoverboard to an beer crate.

My wife bought our oldest son who was 2 at the time, a bobby-car shape like an VW-beetle. It appealed to me from an engineering standpoint. This thing was well designed and looked like the "new-beetle"to! Just for kicks i googled it, and found that they race them just across the border. Funny guys those germans.

Well this kickstarted a couple of evenings lurking on the internet, in which i found:

• Germans racing and modifying bobbycars
• Germans motorizing bobbycars
• electric versions
• Gas powered version
• Somehow this evolved in gas(over)powered beer crates

I linked to the pages that led my mind astray, after which i brewed this hybrid contraption.

The initial idea, A hoverboard powered Bobby car

Which morphed into Beer-crate-Kart territory

Once i layed out he part's it was obvious, the Bobby Car would remain a bobbycar. I was to mate the beer crate with the hoverboard. Mainly for safety reasons my (3 years old by then, with twins knocking on the door) should be able to safely maneuver it. And it must be able accomodate my modest 89kG, 1.85cm. And have ability to bring a smile to my face.

This is really helped by the the Github-community in which one can find threads on how to use these hoverboards, and "hack in to" the mainboard to control the motors. Making it possible to have different ride modes (power modes).

Most solutions shown, based on these bobby-cars lack proper steering, in order to make anything with four wheels go around one should take some angles into account. 

• Ackermann -steering
• Camber angle
• Castor angle
• Toe  in / toe out

The bobby car doesn't foresee in those angles, this is where the Beer Crate racing picks up. I searched several Go-kart solutions an beer crate angles. I ended up with some very aggressive angles for these 6.5" hoverboard and coaster wheels. I used 7.5º for both!, and a 65cm wheel base. This was the input for some CAD-work.

This was used as input for ordering the mild steel and the Aluminium diamond plate. Once this was in i was time for the kick off, Project Hover-Crate. To be continued in the next post